Top 10 green stories of 2010

Like creationists in Kansas, nearly every Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate this year — and half of all Republicans who’ll be in the U.S. Congress next year — dispute the scientific consensus on climate change. Even John McCain, who just two years ago ran for president on a platform of climate action, got all denial-y this year. It’s like evolution … but backwards!

A climate bill passed the U.S. House in summer of 2009, then died a gory death of a thousand paper cuts in the U.S. Senate this year. After the Tea Party Triumph of 2010, don’t expect a resurrection anytime in the next two years. Senatehate, anyone?

Bill Clinton, notorious fast-food junkie, may have turned over a new green leaf. Inspired by daughter Chelsea and, um, the medical profession, Clinton now follows a plant-based diet, with just occasional fish thrown in. (He’s the first pescatarian president!) Meanwhile, influential Brit columnist George Monbiot, who had previously argued that veganism was the only ethical diet, did a 180; inspired by the book Meat: A Benign Extravagance, he now argues that there are ethical ways to raise and eat meat, though industrial animal farming is still an abomination.

(Check back in January for a Grist “Food Fight” series on this contentious topic: to meat or not to meat? And if you’re a conscientious carnivore who would want to contribute your perspective to the series, send an email with links to three writing samples to Food Editor Bonnie Powell.)

Mad propsCalifornia kills Prop 23

Big Oil tried to overthrow the most aggressive climate law in the nation, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act. The result? Epic fail. More than 61 percent of voters told Big Oil to take their mess back to Texas.

(California runner-up: Golden Staters also elected Governor Moonbeam, whose clean energy platform is so ambitious it’s almost worthy of a conservative in Europe.)

Shanghai and mightyChina kicks ass on cleantech, frightens American xenophobes

Hear that bugling? That’s the frenzied fanfare for the all-electric Nissan Leaf and the plug-in Chevy Volt, both of which are officially hitting the roads this month. Let the drag race begin! But for those who like to burn money while they’re not burning oil, the Tesla is still the shit.

(Green-fiction runner-up: Solar by Ian McEwan, about a loathsome Nobel-Prize-winning-physicist-turned-cleantech-entrepreneur-and-climate-crusader.)

Go with the blowBig-ass wind project launched for mid-Atlantic coast

A ginormous wind-power-and-transmission project has started taking shape (figuratively so far) off the East Coast of the U.S., backed by piles of cash from Google and other bullish investors. The Atlantic Wind Connection will stretch 350 miles from northern New Jersey to northern Virginia; if all goes well, the first phase will be up and running by 2016. Once the whole thing’s done, it will bring online as much as 6,000 megawatts of new offshore wind energy — enough to power up to 2 million homes, or 31 gazillion iPads. “Game changer” may be the most overused term of 2010, but this might legitimately qualify.

Photo: Lord MariserForget 2010: The oilpocalypse in the Gulf was the biggest U.S. environmental disasterever. The gusher gushed from April to July, spewing about 5 million barrels of oil and making the Exxon Valdez look like spilt cappuccino. Then everything changed. And by everything we mean nothing.